Cheap Auto Insurance

Its no secret that the internet has opend up more choices and empowered consumers who make purchases online. Since the web is very large and highly competitive retailers are constantly competing for your business with the only way they know how, lower prices and more benefits by shopping with them than their competitors. Obviously this is no secret, everybody knows it. But what most people don’t know is that you can get “internet rates” on many different types of products and services and yes, even your car insurance.

There are many reasons why you should shop for your car insurance online, the first is that since you’re at your computer you can easily compare and get quotes from multiple car insurance providers with a single form instead of having to spend hours on the phone calling up multiple companies. Before the web came along car insurance companies loved whenever they got a call because they knew people had become emotionally invested into the quote because they could easily spend as much as 2 or 3 hours sitting in an office waiting for the paperwork to get processed and receive a quote. Thanks to the internet thats all gone now and most car insurance comparison websites can give you a quote within a matter of minutes.

The other also ties into the competitive nature of the web, since companies know that you can get as many quotes as you want within a matter of minutes it forces their hand to offer the lowest rates possible in order to keep you from window shopping with other companies. This works in your favor because it cuts through all the negotiating tactics that insurance companies usually use and forces them to give you a better rate much faster because they know if you don’t like what you see, you can just close the window and forget about them forever.

When you’re buying car insurance you can’t just factor in the type of car you’re buying, there are many different variables that can influence your monthly rates and your car insurance premiums. Some consumers think that these factors may be unfair but you need to look at it from the car insurance companies side. They are taking all the risk in insuring your vehicle and if you cause a major accident and are unable to payout the necessary claims, they’ll have to step in with their money and cover you. Teh factors car insurance companies use include things that directly relate to your driving such as any past accidents or speeding tickets, to things that may affect your ability to pay such as your credit report or past late payments.

The first major influencing factor in your rates is your driving record, this is probably one of the more obvious ones but it still gets a lot of people into trouble because they assume that just because you’ve had an accident or two, that you’ll get a super high rate. This is not entirely true and you can’t just mark all accident as bad, sure causing a 20 car pileup on the interstate would make an insurance company shake in their boots but something simple like a parking lot bumper test isn’t going to be looked the same way.

Another major factor affected by your driving is your previous speeding tickets, there is a lot of debate about this being fair or not because it doesn’t directly correlate to accidents. Yes a person may drive a few miles per hour faster and as a result get a fine but you can’t really link the two. Just because they tend to drive faster, doesn’t mean they are more likely to get into accidents and even many insurance industry analysts have come out and stated this. Despite this, most insurance companies still use this as a factor when working out your monthly rates and premiums.

In terms of non driving issues, things like your gender, your income, your credit, and your job status can all affect your monthly rate. These things all carry controversy because they don’t directly relate to a persons driving skills but instead relate to the likely hood that a person would be able to pay off their monthly insurance rate on time every month. The issue here is that everyone knows that if you don’t pay on time, then you aren’t going to be covered by the insurance policy so one has to ask what risk is there to an insurance company if people aren’t able to pay? If they don’t pay, the insurance companies don’t have to play.

Everybody wants to get a cheaper car insurance rate but not everyone likes the idea of leaving their insurance company, everyone has their own reasons for this but my own is that I actually like my local insurance branch. Whenever I come in they know me by name and are very helpful, answer all my questions, and have given me tips and strategies that would allow me to lower my rates whenever I qualify. Even if I was offered a rate that was 25% lower I honestly don’t think I would leave because they provide such a great level of service compared to the other insurance branches in the area.

But with that said in this economy everybody needs to cut back and save money where they can, even though they may be loyal to their car insurance company. The good news is that you don’t have to leave them and chase down a new one, many companies are willing to review your account at least twice per year and offer you a lower rate assuming the risk factors such as previous accidents and speeding tickets have either remained the same or maybe even improved.

You can also take advantage of getting multiple quotes online from various other companies, taking the rates that are lower than you’re paying now and show them to your car insurance company. When most see that you’re able to get a lower rate somewhere else they’ll be more than happy to not only match their rate but take off 5% or sometimes even 10% off the lowest rate which puts even more money in your pocket. You can also use this strategy for lowering your deductible, if you can show your car insurance company that somebody else is willing to give you lower deductibles then they will usually match it in order to keep you.

If you’re with a large, national insurance provider you can also look into loyalty rewards which include things like gift cards and in some cases cash back in the form of a check for as long as you don’t have any car accidents or speeding tickets. These may not be as great as saving money on a month to month rate but the more you can get back from your carrier, the more you get to keep and it won’t cost you anything more than a 5 minute phone call to find out.

At one point in their life every parent has to go through what seems like a nightmare, seeing just how much it costs to insure teen drivers. For me this experience was particularly sharp and painful because we have triplets so all 3 started driving at the same time. That not only meant having to buy 3 different cars at the same time but having to add 3 new and “high risk” family members to my existing insurance policy. I don’t even want to mention the various numbers i was quoted because you probably wouldn’t believe it anyway. I had to shop around really hard until I found a great local branch who I have now been with for over 5 years. They gave me some great tips and now I get to pass them on to you!

The first thing is that yes, your child may be a perfect little angel in your eyes but in the eyes of insurance companies they are wild and rebellious menaces who drive up the risk of profits. I know its not fair, but neither is life. The good news is that there are a few things you can do right now to lower your rates. The first thing you should look into is putting the cars and the insurance policies under your name and then adding your children as authorized drivers. What this allows you to do is use your good driving history and let your children hop on and “piggyback” off of your good reputation and low rates.

In fact in many states that require all drivers to have insurance, you may not even have to go through this step because many states have a law that allows car insurance coverage to be transfered over to anyone who drives your car. For example your car has full coverage insurance and your brother from out of state, heck even from out of the country, comes to visit and asks to use it while he’s in town. Because of state laws, it’s not you the person who is covered in the event of an accident, but the car itself. Meaning anyone who you allow to drive it is automatically covered too. So if your brother totals your car, you’re covered even though he isn’t officially on the policy.

Of course the downside of letting your kids piggyback off your reputation is that they can ruin it, any accident or speeding tickets will be a mark against you and not them so when you try to get new lower quotes you’ll already have a black eye and you’ll be paying higher premiums/deductibles than you are now.

One of the things I really don’t like about the insurance industry is that they take all these non factors about you as a person that don’t directly to relate to the product or service that is being insured and then use it against you for profit all under the guise of protecting themselves. One of the best examples of this in action is your personal credit report, did you know that nearly all car insurance companies actually use the information on your credit report against you instead of in your favor?

In fact there are very few benefits to a car insurance seeing your credit report because even if you have 100% perfect credit, it’s not likely to result in a lower rate or deductible. But if you have even 1 tiny late payment suddenly you become a big risk factor for them and they have to jack up the price on your rates. To me this practice is not fair and it should be outlawed, many in the car insurance industry will say that this is required so that companies can be sure they aren’t providing coverage to people who won’t pay for it.

The problem with that argument is that you and I both know that if you’re even 1 day late on your insurance payment, all of your coverage drops and suddenly you become uninsured until you do make the required payment + late fees. So my question is this, if I don’t pay and I immediately lose any coverage on the insurance policy, what risk is there for the car insurance providers? If I didn’t pay my bill, they won’t cover me right? So where do they lose out?

I’ve been asking this for years and have yet to get an answer and thats probably because they know they are wrong, its not fair and I don’t like it but if you’re shopping around for car insurance understand that your credit report will almost certainly be used against you. The only way to really combat this is by getting as many quotes as possible and trying to negotiate lower rates.

Deductibles have always been a bit of a puzzle for me, I understand having to pay my car insurance every month in order to be covered under the policy but making me fork over an additional $50 to $500 every time I need to file a claim seems a bit unnecessary. I’m already paying for insurance, so why would I need to make another payment to cover something that was supposed to have coverage in the first place? My biggest beef with deductibles is that you never know when you’ll have to pay them because accidents are well….. accidents.

But the good news is that you can actually lower how much you pay on your deductible by simply getting a few competing quotes from multiple care insurance companies and presenting them to your current insurance agent. When most people think about shopping around for competing rates they only think about how much they are paying each month, not how much they’ll have to payout once its time to file a claim. Obviously using competing quotes from insurance companies can also reduce your monthly rates but there is no reason you shouldn’t maximize your savings.

The reason this works so well is because companies price their insurance based on the risk of the customers, if you can go out and get a quote at a competing company not only do you show your company that maybe you aren’t as risky as they thought you were, you also show them the most powerful negotiating tactic: that you have other options available at a lower price. Obviously the insurance companies don’t want to lose customers so their only option is to either match or beat the new rate. Many companies will undercut the competition by 10% of the rated quote so you could end up saving a lot more than you think on more than just your monthly rates.

There are many different factors that are considered into your insurance rates and premiums, everything from your driving record and job history can affect how much you get charged for auto insurance but one of the most shocking factors many people learn about is their gender. Yes its true that your gender plays a role in your monthly rates, now at first this may sound sexist and backward but once you realize why insurance companies do this it makes total and complete sense. I actually don’t mind the gender factor even though a few other factors such as credit score and job history bug me a lot more than this.

I’ll get straight to it, gender plays a role in insurance rates in the sense that if you’re a male you’ll likely get charged more than if you were a female driver. Why is that? For a simple reason really, men tend to drive more than women. Now I don’t want to spark a debate about gender roles but I think it’s safe to assume that if a couple is going out somewhere together that usually the man will be the one who is driving. I don’t know why it is, but it’s just the way it’s always been and the way it will likely be forever so don’t fire off your angry emails at me.

You also have to consider that many jobs that require you to drive, for example pizza delivery drivers, florists, and construction workers who use their trucks to do work related transportation are mostly dominated by male drivers. In fact I can’t even think of the last time I had a female pizza delivery driver, can you? Thats why men get charged more, because they spend more time in the car and drive a lot more miles than women tend to which is why to me it makes perfect sense as a risk model. Obviously the longer you spend on the road the more likely it is that you will be involved in some type of accident, even if it isn’t your fault.

In this economy everyone is out to save some money anyway they can and one of the first places they turn to for savings is with their car insurance, for most of us car insurance is a necessary evil that we have to pay over each month or risk breaking the law only to be punished with fines or may be even worse, a lawsuit in the event that we ever get involved with an accident. While many people rush out to get the lowest rate possible they make one crucial mistake, they only pay attention to how much money they’re saving, not how much of their protection policy they are losing.

If you call your insurance agent up right now and tell them that you want them to cut half of your coverage, they’ll have no problem cutting your monthly rates in half too but that kind of defeats the purpose of insurance in the first place. Thats why when you’re comparing insurance rates you’ll want to compare a lot more than just the dollar signs, you’ll want to be sure to compare what protections, if any, you maybe losing with your new policy. The goal of any savvy insurance shopper is to save as much money as possible while still maintaining the protection of their current policy and if you’re lucky maybe even getting a little bit more out of it.

I highly recommend that you stick with the big national agencies when shopping around, not only do they generally have the lower rices they also have the experience and manpower needed to quickly process claims in the event that you ever have to file one. I have nothing against the smaller and more local insurance companies but we’ve read many angry emails from consumers who felt they were not only cheated by the small local insurance company, they were downright scammed into thinking they had more coverage than they really did. In the event of a car accident the last thing you want to be doing is fighting with your own insurance company over what you are covered for and what you aren’t.

So in short don’t just pay attention to the money, keep an eye on your policy as well.